Free The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque

legs, anyway."
    "That's what I say," he answers.
    I offer him a cigarette. What should one do at such mo ments?—anything seems brusque, however well it is meant.  We talk a while, halting and painfully, but whatever Al bert or I get up and move about, we see Hans watching  our feet with a gloomy, anguished gaze, and his mother's eyes following his in the same direction—always only at  the feet—back and forth—You have feet—I have none
    He still thinks of nothing else—and his mother is wholly taken up with him. She does not see that Albert is suffering under it—No one could stick that for long.
    "Albert, we ought to be going along to report now," I say, to give him a pretext for escape.
    "Yes," he says eagerly.
    Once outside, we begin to breathe again. The night reflects softly in the wet pavement. Street lights flicker in the wind. Albert stares straight ahead. "There's nothing I can do about it," he begins; "but when I sit there between them like that and see him and my mother, in the end I get to feel as if it were all my fault, and am ashamed at still having my two feet. A man begins to think he is scum just for being whole. Even an arm-wound like Ludwig's would do; then perhaps one wouldn't seem such an eyesore standing about there."
    I try to console him; but he will not have it. What I say does not convince him, but it gives me at least some relief. It is always so with comfort.
    We go to find Willy. His room is a wilderness. The bed has been dismantled and stands up-ended against the wall.
    It has to be made larger—Willy has grown so much in the army he does not fit it any more. Planks, hammers, saws lie strewn all around. And on a chair there glistens an immense dish of potato salad. He is not there himself. His mother explains that he has been out in the scullery a whole hour scrubbing himself clean.
    Frau Homeyer is on her knees before Willy's pack, rummaging through it. Shaking her head she hauls out some dirty rags that were once a pair of socks. "Dreadful holes!" she murmurs, looking up at Albert and me disapprovingly.
    "Cheap stuff," I say with a shrug.
    "Cheap, indeed!" she protests bitterly. "Shows how little you know about it! Its the best wool, let me tell you, young man. Eight days I was running up and down before I got it. And now see! through already! And you won't find their like anywhere." She contemplates the ruins with an aggrieved air. "I'm sure there must have been time at the war just to pull on a pair of clean socks quickly at least once a week! Four pairs of them he had last time he went out. And now he has brought back only two—and look at them!" She passes her hand through the holes.
    I am just about to take up his defence when he himself enters in triumph, announcing at the top of his voice: "Here's a piece of luck for you! Another aspirant for the Order of the Dixie! There's going to be fricasseed chicken tonight, lads!"
    Waving in his hand like a flag is a fat cock. The green-golden tail feathers gleam, its comb glows crimson and from its beak there hang a few drops of blood. Though I have had a good meal, water begins to gather in my mouth.
    Willy swings the creature to and fro blissfully. Frau Homeyer straightens up and utters a shriek. "Willy! But where did you get it from?"
    Willy announces with pride that he saw it behind the shed, caught it and killed it, all inside two minutes. He slaps his mother on the back. "We did learn something out there, you see. Willy wasn't acjting-deputy-chief-cook for nothing, I tell you."
    She looks at him as if he had murdered a child. Then she calk to her husband. "Oscar!" she moans in a broken voice, "come and look at this—He has killed Binding's pedigree cock!"
    "Binding? What Binding?" asks Willy.
    "The cock belongs to Binding, the milkman next door. O my God, how could you do such a thing?" Frau Homeyer sinks down on a chair.
    "I wasn't going to leave a fine roast like that just running about," says Willy in astonishment, "not